


well if my sister she calls for me

by verdent



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Mentioned but not graphic, liam and jet are only mentioned/referenced
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:02:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25385002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verdent/pseuds/verdent
Summary: tell her death doesn't silence me- drinkin' that wine by ali dineenruby's hair is long and braided and reminiscent of something she lost long ago.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19





	well if my sister she calls for me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thenearsightedbi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenearsightedbi/gifts).



> inspired by a post by @chungledownbi on tumblr which reads:  
> "do you think ruby ever grows her hair out as a reminder of her lost sister, or do you think that constant double take in the mirror would be too much to bare?"

She does not realize it until she is in her night clothes, hands wrinkled in places she has not noticed before where they hold the lantern, flames carving out her shadow along the walls behind her. The darkness still clings to her form in its own blasphemous cry, and she still feels the weight of Liam’s hands shakily fold through her hair in the silence she is returning from. 

_Did his hands shake like that as he held her sister? What does he think now as he holds her with the years that have passed between them? Is it right to think of anything at all?_

They are quieter when they are together than when they are alone, the space they share the same shrouded in darkness as it would be under the glow of the bulb. If someone passed by the doorway of the tearoom, for a moment it would be a wonder to see anyone at all through the figures huddled in their piece of nowhere.

Ruby does not think of it often anymore.

It is her weight and she has grown to carry it, and to spare it much thought now would mean to die again in every second she has not walked beside her.

Her hair beats heavy across her back as she moves like a ghost in her own home. 

She cannot see the braid in her shadow, how long her hair has grown, how her glasses rest on her nose in such a way her father might smile, or grimace, in remembrance at the sight of them.

The mirror catches it all in the light.

Ruby’s throat closes in an instant, the rock she swallowed across the Dulcington bridge unrelenting now. Her nightgown makes no sound as she steps back, profile to the gilded frame reflecting a braid her own, her shadow, and her image burning thick and red and warm along her back--Jet with thick, crimson warmth at her back, begging her sister to forgive herself in her final breaths—Ruby composes and turns to face herself.

She is older. For a beat she refuses to take in anything other than that.

Ruby knows that Liam is not cruel to her, only to those deserving of his cruelty, that his hands have blood unending staining pink peppermint skin, and when he held her hair in these soft ministrations it was his own ode to a memory of the attic.

_It is okay to remember sometimes._

_You lost something long ago._

_What was it that made your heart cry out in agony?_

_That snapped the brittle bones of your life in that one hour of night_

_And made the darkness take up in you where it frames your sunken face?_

The mirror reflects what the flames of the lantern flicker and cannot see, the dark black that the braid should be against her, the hand from the shadows Ruby takes and weeps into.

_I will do this a thousand times and many more._

_It will never be enough to say goodbye to you._

It squeezes her shoulder and gentler than any word wipes the tears straying down Ruby’s neck and is gone again too soon.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading < 3
> 
> find me on tumblr @mrtheinsatiable


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